


Hands That Speak and Hands That Act

by brewsternorth



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, No beta we die like comrades, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nonverbal Communication, Radiation-Related Illness, Science Metaphors, Touch-Starved, Valery's POV, hand holding, implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 09:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brewsternorth/pseuds/brewsternorth
Summary: It’s a dark and stormy night in September 1986. Valery Legasov is looking after the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, while forgetting that he also needs looking after at times. (Like an RBMK reactor, his brain is more dangerous when running at lower energy levels.)
Relationships: Valery Legasov/Boris Shcherbina
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	Hands That Speak and Hands That Act

**Author's Note:**

> A long-delayed response to a [this kinkmeme prompt](https://chernobyl-hbo-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/794.html#cmt6170): “I'd just love to read something sweet and heart warming about them like comfortingly holding hands for the first time or confessing their feelings via writing them down on a sheet of paper in a hotel room because they know it's bugged just pLEASE”
> 
> Thanks, anon prompter! I don't know if they're exactly softies in this one, but this is nearly 7K of feels. 
> 
> For those who've downloaded Craig Mazin's "Chernobyl" scripts, this is a tag to Scene 446. If the timeline doesn't quite make sense historically... it doesn't in canon, either. Any other errors are mine.

The rain continued to come down onto the tent, persistent as grief, insistent as crisis. The camp had otherwise gone all but silent. There were no sounds of voices, or boots striding over wet duckboards, arriving and departing. Only the rain, still laden with radionuclides nearly half a year after the explosion. Whether one called it humility or humiliation, the power of the atom made no allowance for the frailty of the human ego, any more than it showed mercy to the frail human body.

There would be a great deal more activity in the compound come daybreak. Now that the unthinkable had been spoken, the promise broken, the decision that was not a decision unanimously agreed to, the next step had been to give it a practical form. Valery could visualize it as though from aloft, from one of the helicopters, or even from a satellite in orbit, perhaps the American one that had photographed the fire. Troop movements. Forward bases. Staging areas. Logistics. Decontamination stations. More radiological surveys, in greater detail, to determine the least contaminated or most direct access route to the roof on foot, whichever was the more feasible. Full protective gear, or the closest thing to it, for the little that it would be worth against twelve thousand roentgen. Enough dosimeters to go around. Too many details to capture in words or numbers alone, he had scribbled diagrams and sketched maps to get his head around them all. They would still have to be partially transcribed into prose, but it was a start. 

Tarakanov, though understandably weary at the end of the working day, had got his second wind once they had a strategy in hand, horrible as that strategy might be. Like the machines he looked after, like the eager soldiers who operated them, the General preferred straightforwardness. A beginning, a set of procedures, an end. The final casualty-list was to be reckoned, and grieved over, only after that. Not that Nikolai was a man lacking in imagination, still less in intelligence or compassion; he was a pragmatist, as much so as Boris. The more complicated something became, the more likely it was to go wrong. The ruins of Reactor Number Four stood as an object lesson of that dictum.

The sheer numbers of men to be involved in Masha’s cleanup were stunning. Objectively, they were a mere stream diverted from the three-quarters of a million recruited for the overall decontamination of the affected region. Even so, they would form the largest single concentration of men for one project in one relatively small space. (Valery wondered: would Hercules have been recognized for the labour of the Augean stables if he had delegated the work to several regiments’ worth of hoplites, a squadron at a time for a minute and a half per man, armed with little more than paintbrushes?) The concern now was not so much resources, human or otherwise, as _time_. It would take longer to clear the most-contaminated section of roof with bio-robots than with mechanical ones, and the weather had already begun to close in, making containment all the more difficult. The clock was ticking, like the steady pattering of raindrops onto the worktable. Time was running out.

Boris was leafing through and annotating papers of some kind, draft reports and memos for various Kremlin departments most likely. Valery had been too engrossed in his own logbooks and papers to pay much attention to him, but the brisk rustle and occasional huff were audible even over the rain. Both of them had a great deal of information to absorb and process in the least time necessary, and very little of it was encouraging.

Boris had slapped down his files on his side of the dry part of the table long before Valery had come to his full stop. He had said nothing while Valery carried on writing. Weeks and months of practice had enabled the two of them to differentiate between companionable quietude and unsettling silence. This was one of the former occasions. One of them might lift his eyes to the other from time to time, but neither was in a hurry to speak as yet. Words spoken aloud seemed hardly adequate tonight, in any case.

At last, Valery had to set his pen down, wincing. (More specifically: he had to disengage his pen from the claw-like grip of his cramped right hand with the fingers of his left before laying it down on the table.) Of all the times for his body to betray him…! Unlike the new and troubling discomforts that had dogged him since he’d come to Chernobyl like carrion-birds circling a wounded man on the battlefield, this cramp was an old and unwelcome acquaintance. He had thought he might be able to avoid the worst of it as he had done on more than one occasion in the recent past, but no such luck. It must’ve passed the point where he would ordinarily have observed the symptoms, and dealt with them, while he was still in a fugue of calculations. Foolish of him, really.

Perhaps he could get a little relief through his usual tactics. He got to his feet and paced between the ends of the table, cradling his right wrist in the crook of his left elbow. The pins-and-needles sensations in his feet as the blood flow resumed were proof that he should have started moving earlier. Couldn’t be helped: at least the exercise would warm him up. He’d have to put on one of the blue duffle-coats over his fatigues when he left the tent, against the wet chill of the southwesterly wind that was whipping up. He heard a muttered curse from the sentry outside, as one particularly violent gust rattled the sides of the tent, hammered it with slanting rain. He shivered, himself; the little of the gust that found its way past the tent-flaps felt unusually cold.

Boris, as though infected with the same restlessness, had got out of his chair at the far end and put himself in what they had by unspoken agreement designated the guest chair, the one nearest Valery’s. (There was a similar arrangement in their work-trailer.) He made the same gesture with gaze and hands that he had first made in the Central Committee’s meeting-room in late April: _Come. Sit._ The underlying swagger was considerably diminished, but the command still rankled. Boris followed it with an impatient _Give it here_ gesture once Valery was back in his chair. Give what? Boris was pointing at something. Valery’s watch? No; he’d left it on the table on top of one of his other notebooks, it needed winding. His bad arm? He shrugged awkwardly and fished it over onto the scant space left between rain puddles and apparatus and the two of them, palm up. 

He spoke aloud for the first time in a while, keeping his voice low and unsure why he was doing so. “I’m not sure how much good you can—”

Boris grasped his cramped hand. Not in the usual handshake, but in a peculiar left-handed grasp, no less bone-crushing in pressure for being that hand instead of his right one. And it _hurt_. Valery had to stifle a cry behind clenched teeth. Then another as the grip shifted. He tucked his chin down and forced himself to breathe steadily, to breathe _out_, to hold himself still. After a few breaths, he had the dizzy sensation that the pain was becoming almost bearable, or that he could force it down adequately. 

Then it stopped. He had the impression of Boris’ eyes on him, but he couldn’t look up. 

“Do you want me to stop,” murmured Boris, only half a question.

Valery shook his head, jerkily. “Keep going,” he gasped. “Careful. Slower.”

Boris kept going, carefully, slowly, with a precision and a gentleness Valery wouldn’t have expected of him at their first encounter. As though Valery’s hand were a delicate piece of machinery to be put back into working order and tested, piece by piece. It hurt, exquisitely, in waves (a part of his mind was muttering irrelevantly to itself about dose fractionation), and yet between the crests of pain there was a hint of relief, tensed joints and muscles relearning how to move.

“Typewriter?” Boris asked, and it took Valery a little too long to pull the meaning out of the word.

“Tried,” he said, haltingly. “In college. Just made it worse.”

An almost audible furrowed brow. “Worse?” 

Valery made a helpless gesture with his free hand. “Both hands.”

Boris uttered a grunt that might have been understanding, or chagrin.

The quiet deepened. Had the rain and wind slackened, or was it just that Valery’s blood was up so much that he could no longer hear them? Despite the chill of the night, sweat was gathering at his temples, in the nape of his neck, in the small of his back. Not a machine, then, but an animal. Something that could be weary and afraid without reproach. Something that could make choices on instinct rather than reason, without fear of remorse. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling appallingly unmoored.

“Valery,” said Boris, tenderly. At some point he’d wrapped the fingers of his right hand around Valery’s wrist, pushing back the sleeve, and it felt good. Warm. Soothing. But the massaging hand had stopped moving again. Boris must have misinterpreted him. He had to—

“Not– not–” the words were flying out of his head– “don’t stop.”

“Good?”

Valery forced himself to open his eyes, nod, form some kind of reassuring expression. “Better.” It was, a little. He didn’t have the energy to explain in greater detail.

“Almost done. Last part will hurt the most.” Boris practically radiated concern. “I’ll try–” He broke off. Everything but his words said _you can still ask me to stop. I don’t want to hurt you._ Trying not to frighten the animal.

“We’ve come this far,” rasped Valery, still a man. “Keep going.”

The bone-crusher returned. Coherent thought made a flying leap for cover and there cowered, trembling. Ears rang. A high, flat cry of pain, almost a sob, dwindling. A sickening crackle, distant. _Breathe, you fool, breathe or you’ll pass out._ Vision misting. Too much—

He came to lucidity by degrees. His breathing was still ragged and over-loud. His right hand felt like a foreign thing, still, cradled at the wrist in Boris’ palm, snug between heel and fingertips, and it ached, oh, it throbbed in every part, but now he thought it could work again. The palm of his left hand stung a little where his fingernails had dug in. Boris made a fist with his free hand, then stretched the fingers out. Valery found he could mimic the motion with his own right hand, though it trembled. Good. The warmth at his wrist echoed up his arm: he could feel the tension ebb, all the way up to the shoulder. The rest of him drifted, powerless, shaky, half mindless, blinking slowly, pathetically thankful. For a long second his brain freewheeled.

Boris’ look of concern hadn’t altered. Or, if it had, it was with increased energy: _Let me help you. Let me take care of you. Don’t let it get this bad again._ It was almost too overwhelming to look at. Valery nodded acknowledgment, slowly.

He shifted a little in his chair, adjusting himself – the suffusing sense of release was not altogether limited to his arm – and covered the motion by patting down the unfamiliar pockets of his fatigues for his cigarette-packet with his left hand. (Apparently he’d moved his watch to his trouser-pocket, and – unusually for him! – forgotten the fact.) A smoke might help to clear his head, soothe the gritty ache in his throat that didn’t quite resolve into a cough until he tried to sleep.

“What,” said Boris, after a moment.

“Cigarette,” said Valery sheepishly. 

Boris was too much of a politician and a gentleman to roll his eyes, but he did give Valery a sardonic _oh, you_ look as he moved the packet and lighter across the table. They’d lived so long in each other’s pockets that they had come to know their contents, present or absent. (There was a folded scrap of paper in Boris’ breast pocket that contained his grandson’s wobbly drawing of the night sky. It sat closer to his heart than his deputy chairman’s pin.)

Valery moved to pick up his belongings with the automatism of habit, and found himself stuck as surely as Joker on the roof: his right hand was still clasped in Boris’ left, held fast at the knuckles now. He frowned, mildly affronted: _really?_

Boris plucked out one cigarette and handed it over. “Save your fingers,” he said, a poor excuse, but given blandly enough that Valery let it pass. For someone who didn’t smoke himself, Boris was remarkably agile with the lighter, snapping the flame into life one-handed on the first go. In what foxhole, and for which Army comrade, had he last performed this service? Hard to believe he’d do it for a mere colleague, unless that colleague were also an old soldier. One of those little mysteries, a tiny pleasure to be savoured like this moment’s closeness between them, a little respite in this long war, as comforting to the spirit as the first drag of smoke.

“Is it worse in the rain?” Boris asked after a long pause, hesitant to break the resumed quiet.

Valery cleared his throat. “What’s that?”

“Your hand.” Boris tilted his head at it. “Is it worse when the rain comes?”

“No. Deadlines mostly, examinations before that… It’s not been this bad in a while.”

“Mm.” Boris’ expression darkened, becoming one familiar to Valery as the one that preceded either some decisive action or the beginnings of an argument. Whichever it was to be, he needed to head it off, or at least mitigate it.

He returned a question for a question. “Doesn’t it get to you, Boris?” Boris looked quizzical. “I don’t just mean the radiation. This place. The work we’re doing. The lives we’re counting. The lies we’re telling. All of it.”

He had his answer even before he’d stopped speaking. Boris’ left hand had tensed, just a little, along with the muscles of his face: hurt. And Valery had caused it, again. He forced himself not to look away. Not now. Whoever else they had to tell half-truths or worse to, there could be no lies between the two of them.

“See for yourself,” Boris said, frankly, voice rough. He raised his right hand a couple of centimetres off the table, palm down. Was it trembling? Hard to tell in the poor light. He let it fall again.

Valery reached out (never mind the dampening sleeve dragged through a puddle) and placed his free hand over that hand, just to confirm his suspicion. There _was_ a tremor, a very slight one, and, to someone as accustomed to such tight control over himself as Boris, even a slight loss would feel as though a large defensive earthwork were beginning to crumble to dust. Boris’ eyes looked haunted, wary: he glanced down at their overlapped hands, and Valery followed his gaze. Ah. Both of them had hands that looked vaguely over-scrubbed, blotched and raw in spots, on account of repeated contamination and decontamination. Even in this light, however, it was a little too obvious who of the two of them had spent longer in ionizing radiation. The difference between their hands was as clear as between two film-badges with differing exposures. _I did what had to be done,_ Valery willed Boris to understand. _You would have done the same in my place. This is not reckless self-endangerment; it is duty. Lives depend upon it._

_I understand,_Boris’ answering scowl said, _and I don’t have to like it. Any part of it._

A conventional expression of reassurance, however sincere, would have rung false in that moment. Normally it was left to Boris as the superior to initiate a comradely touch, but he had as good as invited a reversal of the usual protocol. Valery glanced down once more to cross-check the motions of his hands by eye – frustratingly, he could no longer rely consistently on his own fingers for that data – and applied gentle pressure with both of them. Downwards, very slowly, with his left palm; an outward squeeze, no less slow, with his right thumb. One could compare it to an osmosis towards equilibrium between two solutions across a membrane, or the flow of electrons from one potential to another: where one side was weaker, the other side could infuse strength in a continuous process, and vice versa. Nothing would be lost, except the obligatory kopeck’s worth to grease entropy’s palm.

Certain schools of thought preached the futility of accumulating and holding onto physical possessions; instead pursuing experience, insight, community. Strange that it had taken a nuclear disaster to remind them both of that futility, but the fact remained: a great deal of what they still possessed would be destroyed, or sealed away out of reach, like Madame Curie’s notebooks in lead-lined vaults, dangerous long after the death of their author. The present days of life that remained, these unguarded moments, had become a richness all their own. This benevolent silence between both of them, that communicated all and withheld nothing, that was a gold worth mining. The slackening of tension in the fingers that held those of his right hand, under the absent-minded strokes of his right thumb, was worth all the gold in the Soviet Union. If it had been his privilege to grant one, an embrace would have been worth worlds.

He looked up, surer of his grasp now, wanting to reinforce the line of communication between them.

Where he had expected understanding from Boris, he received the opposite: bewilderment. Something that could easily transmute from stunned surprise into offence, anger, restrained derision, a reassertion of power, a punishment. Valery had already crossed a line, it emerged. Somewhere in the past few minutes he had overstayed, or over-exploited, Boris’ invitation. A stammered apology perched on Valery’s lips, unsaid. He had to walk back his advances or be stranded deep in enemy territory; but he was hardly certain what would be sufficient now by way of retreat.

He took back his left hand as an interim gesture, plucking his cigarette from his lips, thinking to tap the ash from it. Too late: it had gone out, extinguished by that same ash. (He pressed his lips together in annoyance.) He scanned the table for the nearest ashtray, found it on the far side of his right arm, and reached over a little awkwardly to crush the useless butt into it left-handed. By the time he met Boris’ gaze again he had schooled his face into neutrality, prepared to accept what would follow like a rational man.

And yet again found that he had miscalculated. The expression in Boris’ eyes was – the only way to describe it was wounded. It was an entirely different quality of hurt from the one Valery had been expecting: a quiet and very human pain. As though Boris had been more concerned about Valery’s response than the other way around. The vulnerability of it was thoroughly unnerving, as though something that should have been empty was full. About to explode, even.

“Valery,” said Boris, hoarsely, barely audible. He seemed lost for words: normally he had plenty of them, but distributed them with strategy and care, flattery and insult alike administered in calculated doses. Even his tirade at Moscow about the propaganda number that had done for Joker had held back half of what he had wanted to express. “I didn’t know–” He broke off, but the rest was clear. _I didn’t know this was a both-of-us thing. I saw how you wanted this, and kept telling yourself you didn’t. I gave you as much as I could get away with. Given the circumstances. I didn’t know I could want anything back._ Ruefully: _I’d been telling myself the same thing you had. How naive we’ve been!_ More steely: _This may be the sanest thing we’ve done since we came here._

Valery nodded, helplessly at first, then with more assurance. _I understand that now. And: agreed. Given the circumstances._ He hesitated before putting his next question into words, as quietly spoken as they were, but he could not be misunderstood, not now: “What do you want me to do?”

“Give me your hand.” Eyes alight, needy, but still cautious. As though they hadn’t already made this kind of contact. Valery supposed they hadn’t at Boris’ initiative; that much was new, and therefore cause for uncertainty. They had done much that had never been tried these past few months.

_Yes. Yes, of course._ Valery reached out unhesitatingly to place his free hand back where it had been. That Boris had turned his hand over so that their hands were now palm-to-palm turned out to be less of a problem than expected. If anything, it was an advantage: the warmth, the sensation of two pulses in counterpoint, was greater. The knowledge that this was wanted, long-desired, even, from each of them, was a catalyst for the renewed energy flow. (Energy. Shielding. Lead. What was the best way to get more of it? They might not need it melted down as a siege-weapon, but those taking part in the assault would need armour. The three remaining reactors would eventually be shut down, hopefully without any further difficulty, but would there be increased risk to safety beyond a certain threshold of removal of lead shielding in the mean time? Any way to better distribute what little lead they already had, without endangering the other liquidators?)

“Valera,” growled Boris in warning.

“Sorry,” Valery blurted, almost reflexively.

Boris shook his head in dismissal. His expression seemed strangely noble in a way that Valery had seen before, but couldn't place at first. It didn’t belong to the cynical apparatchik of the Kremlin, but to another Boris, whom age had made wise instead of jaded. A man who could draw strength from being in the land of his birth, among his own people, speaking his native language; who could dig his heels into the same Ukrainian bedrock from which he himself had been sculpted, and tell the rest of the world, even Gorbachev himself, to go to hell. The earth of Chernobyl would sicken and be turned inside-out with bulldozers, but the immortal memory of stone would go on. _And every generation must know its own suffering._

It was, if not absolution as such, then perspective. The country had suffered and survived so much before this. It could afford a little kindness, even fussiness, towards one ineffectual Muscovite scientist making clumsy efforts to reduce the harm caused by this disaster, and ask almost nothing in return.

He had never learned the knack of making his mind go completely blank, but he could narrow the focus of his thoughts, or try to. He could breathe more deeply of the chilly air, more slowly, to the cadence of the half-absent-minded caress of the broad hands around and against his. (Strange that such ferocious strength and extraordinary sweetness could coexist in them. He had expected the one but not the other.) He could pick up the rhythm with his own hands, even if it felt as though he were an amateur violinist trying to improvise a duet with a professional concertmaster, and mimic the gentle sweep and clasp of fingers. The animal part of his spirit, if animal it was, was purring.

He tried to bite back an instinctive smile at one particularly ticklish touch to his left wrist, but his breath still caught a little too sharply. Boris, with a sly quirk to his lips, repeated that touch. Valery mirrored it with his own hand, extending his fingers under the cuff of Boris’ dress-shirt. (A cuff that, like the rest of the shirt, was still remarkably crisp to the touch even after a long day’s wear; a bit of Soviet engineering that had eluded the makers of the fatigues.) They had to restrain any hint of laughter in case the sentry outside made something of it, but the ongoing rain could do the laughing for them.

Laughter of the rain? Good grief, his mind was wandering into some strange paths. Either as a third-order effect of the radiation, or as a protective measure against the pervasive madness of this place. If he could smile at something other than how warm his fingers had grown on a cold night like this, it would be to smile at himself. Boris was smiling right back. Maybe he was ticklish too. Perhaps the absurdity was infectious. Or maybe it was a little like that American movie he’d once seen, where two shipwrecked sailors laughed at their Pyrrhic victory over a monstrous enemy: both were glad to be alive, and alive together, but knew all too well what, and who, it had cost them, and that they were still a long way from shore. But for those long moments they could smile, and float, and catch their breaths, and hold on. The world was swaying and rolling like an ocean-swell, and Boris sat calmly in the midst of it like a flagship, like a rock, holding Valery secure with nothing more than the strength of his two hands.

The touches at his hands were slowing, to the rhythm of blinking rather than breathing. _No, it’s all right,_ Valery wanted to say, _don’t stop. Please._ They had been a welcome distraction. Weariness was a live thing that had him by the scruff of the neck. Radiation made him tired; work made him tired; remorse tired his spirit, as though he had to drag it along behind him. The energy was starting to drain out of his muscles, even the ones holding up his head, leaving only trembling dregs. The risk that Boris might have to carry him out of here seemed closer to likely at this point, and he found it less objectionable than he might once have done. To have those strong well-worn hands on him, those formidable shoulders bearing him up like a comrade-in-arms on the battlefield: it was a weakness he could imagine himself submitting to. He smiled again, though he knew it had to look feeble. There was no teasing in return this time, only softness.

“You’re done in,” said Boris, voice low and steady. “Get some rest.”

“I’ll write ‘Do Not Disturb’ on a piece of paper,” Valery said, with the dignified enunciation of the exhausted or intoxicated, feeling the consonants in his mouth more than he heard them, “and stuff it in the band of this cap.”

Boris didn’t laugh. “Better idea: write that sign, and pin it to your door at the hotel. Get some _actual_ rest. I know – nobody’s sleeping around here – just get your head down level with your heart, take the strain off both of them. You’ll think more clearly for it.”

It was a tempting offer: to leave his post, to let gravity have the upper hand for more than just a few minutes at a time. A significant part of him wanted to discard his responsibilities like contaminated clothing, abandon his aching body to forgetfulness the way some people abandoned themselves to drink. To escape. If he could have controlled what he dreamed of in what might be called sleep, it might be to dream of that sort of liberation. To dream of curling up somewhere far away, slack-limbed, comforted, warmed, protected, not to have to think of this place and what would become of it. Or him. Or Boris. Or the half-million liquidators. Or the thousands more who had been made refugees by this disaster.

But that self-deception was not for him, and he suspected his dreaming mind knew it. The overall situation was just too unstable. There was too much still to be done, or to be prepared to do, from minute to minute. At any time Vladimir – Nikolai, rather – might send over a runner with the latest bad news from the reactors. With the rain falling as it was, they might have to hurriedly dewater a whole new corner of the Reactor Four core before they risked yet another steam explosion. Once the Lunokhods broke down, and it was a matter of when and not if that happened, how many more men might have to take over for them before Nina and Katya could be cleared? Assuming the Shelter Object was completed by the time the worst of winter came, which was looking increasingly unlikely at the present rate, would the materials they had made it from stand up to the dual onslaught of radiation and its associated decay-heat from within and the extremes of weather from without? If so, for how long? And those were just some of the obligations within a few square kilometres of the power-plant. His orders were to minimise risk to the public by ensuring remediation of contaminated areas affected by the disaster, and they’d found those hundreds of kilometres away in the next republic over, for pity’s sake. No. No.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, I have to stay here. Too much to do. You go back, by all means, catch up on your own rest. I may be needed here at any moment.”

He would have said more, but Boris’ stare was positively actinic.

“Valera,” he said, “that wasn’t a suggestion. You’re falling apart, and it’s getting in the way of your work. Your own writing hand is giving you distress signals. If you won’t listen to them, I must.”

As though Boris could understand Valery’s inner workings better than Valery himself could! The insanity of it drew Valery’s smile into a rictus. “You know what else is giving distress signals? This power-plant. Containment for Reactor Four is close to a month behind schedule–”

“I know, I know,” Boris grumbled. He had had to explain that to the General Secretary, in words a politician would understand; an unenviable task. Fortunately he was an expert on concrete as well as politicians.

“What you may not know,” Valery said in a lower voice, “is what’s going on with the others. Reactor Three seems to have been somewhat damaged in the explosion of Four. We’re trying to find out how badly, without killing anyone. Reactors One and Two were supposed to be in stable condition, but the latest readings are at best ambiguous. We may end up with another disaster to clean up after.”

Boris digested this news for a moment. “Is it necessary for you to stay here and wait for it to happen?”

Valery cocked his head. “I _am_ the one of us who fully understands how an RBMK reactor works, Boris.”

“I’ll rephrase. Is it necessary for Valery Alexeievitch Legasov to lead the response?”

“What do you mean?” Valery felt his hackles rise.

“I mean,” said Boris evenly, “you can return to the Polissya with me, or to the Kurchatov on your own.” He used the informal tone he’d used between the two of them ever since the helicopter ride from Kiev, but with the faintest additional emphasis on the informal “you” that lent an extra edge to his words. All the work that they’d done together, and Deputy Chairman Shcherbina was pulling rank on him.

“Is this one of those empty threats of yours? Another toy rifle you want to point at my head?” As limited as their lifespans were, an impending bullet might be a mercy instead of a source of dread. To spend those remaining painful months in uselessness, though, was unacceptable.

Boris’ stare said, _I assure you, this one is no toy._

“Do you understand what’s at stake? You do know you’d leave the future of this whole project in the hands of – ?” Valery broke off, half-choking on his own anger, coughing hoarsely, only at that moment aware of how far he’d raised his voice. Boris looked unconvinced. Context, context. To the uninitiated the feuds within the Institute would seem ridiculously petty, the antics of over-aged schoolchildren with high-level degrees, as indeed they were; but overlaid on this crisis situation they would have far-reaching consequences. Boris was surely no stranger to internal disputes among his own people: he would have to be reminded that Professor Legasov could be a political animal when the situation demanded it. (Just because he wasn’t fond of these games didn’t mean he was incompetent at them.) Valery took a deep breath.

“The Soviet system allows for only one party,” he said, keeping his voice down, “but in practice there are many parties within that party, regardless of level, aligned with this or that person. Correct?” Boris inclined his head in the affirmative. “The Institute has much the same problem.”

“It never came up before,” Boris said, musingly, at the same volume. 

“Only because you have an incomplete picture of it. The Institute’s parties form two crude groupings: most of the scientists you’ve seen so far, the ones working for me, belong to the party of ‘yes’. They’re good at coming up with ideas and poor at taking command of a situation. My would-be replacement belongs to the party of ‘no’. Ambitious and uncompromising, certainly: but also single-minded and stubborn, and not beneficially so. You know what warfare looks like when generals are more willing to fight one another than the enemy. Order, counter-order, disorder.” (Boris nodded grimly.) “Imagine someone who would turn away a convoy of materials vital to the cleanup effort, just because _he_ had not ordered them, only for the materials he himself had ordered to end up delayed because they had met the convoy he had just turned away on the road.”

“Granted,” said Boris, with no change in tone. “Imagine something else. I’ve dreamt of it, as often as I get to dream. I come in here one day, or into the trailer, or the suite. Your corpse is sitting at the table; and you’re long gone. The same chaos as if you’d been sent away, only I wouldn’t have the counsel of a man I trusted to cut through all the, the scientist politics. I wouldn’t have you, Valery.” He peered down greyly, any other expression on his face giving way to blank despair. “Not sure I’d have me.”

“Boris–” Valery pleaded. Even a filtered glimpse of those shadows was almost physically too much to bear. The sort of strength it took to withstand the agony and not to show it was unimaginable. Certainly not the sort of strength Valery could have summoned at this point. 

“Let’s not kill ourselves before we get the job done,” said Boris, favouring him with a weary warm gaze. Compared to the greyness of a few moments prior, it was a furnace. “Four hours until first light. They can spare you for that long. If something happens, you’re closer to a working telephone at the hotel than you’d be here. And not much further from the plant.”

Valery was being wheedled, he knew, but with nothing other than facts. “I suppose you’re right.”

_You know it,_ said Boris’ forceful expression. His hands grasped Valery’s shoulders tightly enough to keep him braced up, not enough to leave marks. It was Valery’s knee-joints that felt as though their moving parts were made from broken glass, now that the berserk strength that’d yanked him to his feet had left them. Slowly grinding down into grit, then sharp Pripyat River sand, limp as the sandbags they’d piled in a berm a metre thick between the riverbank and the reactor’s cooling-pond. He had to clutch at Boris’ arms to keep his balance. 

“Steady,” Boris murmured, all concern. “Steady.” There was no answer Valery could make to that but to wait, and breathe as regularly as possible until the worst of the weakness passed, and listen to the rain and wind come and go through the faint hum in his ears.

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a ‘no’,” Boris said at length. “Or a ‘yes’, for that matter.”

“I was a different man, once,” Valery replied. “Now I’m of the party of ‘perhaps’. I know what needs to be done, but if the circumstances change I’ll work with them.”

“The man for the job.” It was an assertion rather than a question. A reminder, too, to live up to those words, but a reassurance that it lay within his power to do so.

“As you say,” said Valery, acknowledging the terms of the equation.

Boris looked satisfied with the proof, and gave both of Valery’s shoulders a comradely squeeze before letting go. Argument concluded. 

Valery shoved his packet and lighter into a pocket of his fatigue-jacket, and had been on the point of turning to walk over to the far end of the tent (more like stumble over; his legs were less fully-functional than he’d have preferred) to grab his duffle-coat when Boris intercepted him, a hand around his right wrist again. A parting shot? Valery glanced over at him sharply.

“Hand feel better?” said Boris, solicitously.

“Good enough,” said Valery, trying to keep a tight rein on his irritation. He appreciated these interruptions of his solitude, probably a great deal more than he should; but hadn’t what little was left of his pride taken enough of a battering?

Boris released his grip, gently, giving Valery some space. Contrite was not in his repertoire, nor would Valery have expected it to be, but there was an expression of understanding in his eyes that was very nearly the same thing. “Very well.” In a matter of moments, a few paces of his long legs there and back, he’d retrieved the coats and handed Valery’s over. “I’ll have calls to make, to get this project going. If you’re not sleeping you may as well sit alongside, listen in. Make sure I’m not making a mess of the science.”

“You hardly need me for that by now,” Valery said, wriggling his way into his (unaccountably heavy) coat. “You’ve learned faster than most of my first-year students.”

“All the same,” said Boris, untangling the collar of Valery’s coat so that it sat properly on his shoulders, his hands lingering on the lapels, on Valery, just a few moments longer than was merely collegial, “I would appreciate the support.” The intensity of his look suggested that, had they not risked being overheard, the declaration would have been a more sentimental one. _Stay with me, Valera._ Something like that.

Valery nodded, once. _I’m with you._

A maelstrom of expressions tumbled over Boris’ face – joy and grief, amusement and anger – in ways even Valery couldn’t imagine how they’d be put into words. Valery barely had a few moments to appreciate them (a joyous expression on Boris’ features was _beautiful_) before a professional impassivity covered them all up as swiftly and fully as a welder’s mask.

“Comrade soldier!” Boris rasped in the direction of the tent-flaps.

“Sir,” came the reply from outside.

“We’re leaving. Valera: come on.”

***

Valery surfaced from disorienting dreams of waist-high plashing floodwater, smothering gloom, and the oppressive howl of a meter nearly at the limits of the radiation it could measure, to find his right hand clasped once more in a warm firm grip. As though the owner of the gripping hand could drag him out of the flood, out of his reverie, by main force. Save him from drowning in his own mind, bring him to a place where he could draw a painless breath. (Had someone been calling his name?)

He squinted into the half-light of the Polissya’s command suite and two fierce eyes.

“All is well,” said Boris, releasing his grip. “The storm has passed.” His tone was so flat that for a moment Valery wondered if those words had been code of some sort, meant to bypass the inevitable microphones.

“That long,” he said almost to himself, shoving the blanket aside and gingerly levering himself to vertical from where he’d been sprawled sidelong. Boris had been right; he was thinking more clearly for the temporary surrender to gravity. What had been a Masha-like heap of debris in his mind before he slept was now forming into a coherent structure, like the reinforced concrete segments being prefabricated for the Shelter Object. Trying to straighten up a little in his seat, he winced: he was getting a little old to be dozing off curled up on the soft furnishings like his cat. (Ksyusha might have objected to calling this particular couch “soft”. So might Valery, for that matter, though his suite’s daybed wasn’t much of an improvement upon it. The only advantage to either was proximity to the phone.) He rubbed at his eyes and the back of his neck in turn.

Boris handed over his glasses, serenely. “Calling Moscow in an hour.”

Valery directed a glance at him: _Do you want me to listen in on that call?_ A valid question. It was one thing to have him listen in on calls to one lower-ranked official or another, even if he had somehow drifted off into a doze in the middle of one of those conversations. (He hoped it hadn’t been too obvious at the other end, or to anyone else listening in.) But neither of them had made a good impression on the Premier or the General Secretary in the recent past.

Boris gave a very small smile and a twitch of his chin, an infinitesimal affirmative. Perhaps there was a slight gleam in his eyes, something not entirely tamed, the Ukrainian peeking out of the apparatchik’s mask. _I would appreciate the support._

Valery managed a half-smile back. _I’m with you._

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the radioactive fandom - especially gwinny3k whose gifsets provided valuable visual references. :)
> 
> Yes, I did give Valery the same nightmare we all had at the end of episode 2...


End file.
